The company operating the country’s largest fuel terminal has the potential to store an extra 350 million litres of imported refined oil at Northland’s Marsden Point, on top of the 300 million litres of storage already in service.
The extra space consisted of empty tanks that once stored crude oil when the company operated a refinery, Channel Infrastructure’s chief executive Rob Buchanan told Business with Madison.
Utilising them for imported refined products would require conversion upgrades, which the company had already completed on four jet fuel storage tanks.
Two of those tanks were large enough to hold 30 million litres of jet fuel, enough to power 10,000 flights between Auckland and Wellington.
“I think of this site as the nation’s shock absorber,” Buchanan said.
“We’re here to be the buffer when there’s supply challenges overseas.”
The company stored fuel on behalf of fuel importers – Ampol, the owner of Z Energy, BP and ExxonMobil.
“Our fuel throughput remains absolutely normal,” Buchanan said in light of the Middle East conflict causing upstream oil supply constraints globally.
“We’ve got so much storage capacity and so much throughput capacity that we’re just not seeing a huge change in the throughput on the site.
“So I think that’s positive for where we are today.”
He said he had also not witnessed nor heard of any shipment disruptions.
A tanker carrying a mix of refined fuel was due to arrive at the site’s jetty at the end of this week.
Channel Infrastructure has operated as an import and storage terminal since 2022 when it shut down refining operations – what was New Zealand’s only oil refinery.
Buchanan said the country’s fuel supply would not be any more secure in this geopolitical environment if the refinery remained in operation.
“If we are challenged because the big refineries - which were much bigger than this refinery – in Asia can’t get feedstock, then this refinery here ... would also be struggling to get feedstock.
“There is not a shortage globally of refining capacity. The concern is around supply of oil through the Strait of Hormuz.”
Go inside the Marsden Point storage terminal and see the scale of the country’s fuel supply in the episode of Business with Madison above.
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